COLIN PERRY
Assistant News Editor
They came, they saw, they touched a dead shark’s brain.
Nearly 100 eighth-grade students from Dunkirk Middle School visited the Science Center last Friday as a part of the second annual series of Physiology PhUn Days, sponsored by Fredonia’s Biology Department. A second group of students will be coming this Friday as well, where they too will be able to learn about biology and the science of their own bodies from Fredonia faculty and students.
PhUn Days at Fredonia are part of the nation-wide Phun Week, an annual outreach event sponsored by the American Physiological Society designed to build connections between scientific experts and students in their local communities, and to promote scientific pursuits to children everywhere.
“[Science] is where all the jobs are. That’s where the future of the country is. Everything goes back to science,” said Rock Vallone, the recently retired principal of Dunkirk Middle School, former professor in the Education Department at Fredonia, and one of the instrumental figures behind the event. “There’s so much a child can do with science, and this country needs more [science] and more science-literate people.”
Kathleen Lesniak, professor of science education and another of the PhUn Days’ main organizers, also sees them as a way to emphasize the value of understanding scientific ideas.
“To be a citizen these days, you have to … be critical about what you hear and what you read,” Lesniak said. “An interest in science drives students to find out, ‘why?’ and to think about the evidence and make informed decisions.”
PhUn Days are designed by Vallone, Lesniak and professors of biology like Scott Medler, Bruce Tomlinson, Todd Backes and Fred Harrington, to be completely hands-on. That means the Dunkirk eighth-graders had the chance to use lab technology that measured their vertical jump and heart rate, look at salamander embryos through a microscope or, of course, touch bones and brains to their hearts’ content.
Enthusiasm was evident at every lab, not only from those in eighth grade but from the faculty and the Fredonia student volunteers as well. Mark Dudek, a senior biology major who attended Dunkirk Middle School, helped in a lab where the Dunkirk students measured the electrical activity of their hearts with electrodes attached to their bodies.
“It’s just interesting to try and get them excited about stuff that I like and find interesting,” Dudek said. “Maybe even get them interested in wanting to come to Fredonia as a bio student.”
Dudek sees the hands-on nature of the event as one of its biggest strengths.
“I think when you’re in middle school or high school, you might not always get to see some science in action,” he said. “I think this really gives [the eighth-grade students] the chance to break away from the normal classroom routine and see something that’s practical.”
Krystal Lebron, another senior biology major who attended Dunkirk Middle School, helped in the same lab as Dudek and will be helping again on Friday. Like many others who make the PhUn Days possible, Lebron feels it’s especially vital to reach out to students from areas like Dunkirk and to open them up to the possibility of a college education in general.
“I really do think starting off in middle school and introducing all of this to them is very helpful, specifically because Dunkirk is a very diverse community and there’s a lot of minorities,” Lebron said. “Without outreach programs like this, to be honest I don’t know if [students would know] what the college offers.
“At their age,” she continued, “I don’t think they’ve ever probably encountered a building like [the Science Center,] or the technology that we can offer them, or anything of that sort. It’s probably their first experience, and it kind of leaves a good taste in their mouth.”
“These are the students we want to have looking toward the future,” said Lesniak.
The signs of the wild success of last Friday’s PhUn Days came in many forms, whether it showed on the smiles of the eighth-graders as they experimented with state-of-the-art technology, the smiles of the students and faculty who got to assist them or in the stacks of thank-you letters from Dunkirk Middle School that Lesniak has received. For some, it might just be a field-trip and a half-day out of the classroom — but for others, it may just be the beginning of a lifelong passion.